15 June, 2020 / Published in Dossiers on AIF AMCs, Dossiers on PE-VC

Arali Ventures

Funds managed

Fund name	Asset Class	License
Arali Investment Trust	Seed stage	SEBI AIF Cat 1

Arali Ventures are seed stage investors. The firm was incorporated in 2017 and got SEBI approved in July 2018.
The fund has raised 70% of its planned corpus of $10 million. Rajiv and Arun who are the founders of Aravli tapped into their wide network of corporate contacts to rope in individual corporate professionals at a senior level as investors for the fund.
Their aim has been to focus on deep-tech and enterprise-tech start-ups. Whether it is the validation of an idea, creating access to initial clients or advice on financial & commercial management, they leverage their network and experience to support the portfolio companies.

Key staff

Rajiv Raghunandan (Co-founder & Managing Partner)- Rajiv’s career spans across corporate finance, business consulting, outsourcing and technology. During his 17 years of corporate career, he has built and managed $100M P&L, has overseen M&A, consulted and sold to large enterprise clients. His career includes leadership roles at Arvind Garments, Arthur Andersen, Infosys BPO and Infrahedge. He set up and ran seedX – an advisory and consulting firm for early-stage ventures. He has been actively involved in mentoring start-ups from inception, helping them with strategy and execution, scaling their business, raising capital and building relationships with the investor community.

Arun Raghavan (Co-founder & Partner)- Arun’s career spans across technology, business consulting, sustainability and consumer internet. He has worked at Sonata Software, Deloitte, Infosys BPO and IBM. He had also set up Fairtrade – the global sustainability label in India. He has co-founded and invested in a sustainability focused up-cycling brand, Rimagined. At seedX, he was actively involved in helping startups articulate and demonstrate value, building their sales engine and expanding into newer markets.

The firm’s main focus since the beginning has been in funding and advising only deep-tech & enterprise-tech startups.

The list of companies it has funded (as seen below) adheres to their investment philosophy.

Title: Title – General information & media links, Source: Medium

Title: From seedX to Arali Ventures, Source: Press Reader, Date: 1 October 2019

After starting seedX, both Rajiv and Arun got the confidence to go bigger and invest, mentor and consult deep-tech and enterprise tech start-ups.
In-depth information about the firm’s functions and who it intends to fund.

Title: Rajiv Raghunandan talks about the firm’s investment in CynLr, Source: VCCircle, Date: 6 August 2019.

Title: Arali Ventures make first exit of debut seed fund

In your interview with Press Reader you said, “Our backgrounds are enterprise focused and we can come in and add much more value than in a consumer kind of company”. How do you think your experience has added value in advising these start-ups?
How does the tech space in VC look like in the next 5 years considering the on- going COVID-19 situation?

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